Download PDF | The Fall Of Constantinople To The Ottomans Context And Consequences Routledge ( 2012)
238 Pages
The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 presents similar problems to those I encountered when writing about its previous fall in 1204 to the Venetians and the soldiers of the fourth crusade.1 Once again, I have avoided a conventional narrative; this time on the grounds that Sir Steven Runciman has made such an approach unnecessary.2 I have again preferred to concentrate on the historical significance of the event. Both 1204 and 1453 have come to be seen as turning points in history. If they were, then it was in very different ways.
1204 was one of those few events which changed the course of history. If anything illustrates the role of the contingent in history it is the story of the fourth crusade. When it set sail from Venice, its outcome was only ever the remotest of remote possibilities, but far more momentous were its consequences. It allowed the conquerors to dismantle the system of political control exercised from Constantinople and in doing so to destroy it as an imperial metropolis. In its place there emerged a commercial network dominated by Venice and Genoa, which ensured political fragmentation and condemned a restored Byzantine Empire to impotence. By way of contrast, the fall of the city in 1453 was long overdue and only gave clearer definition to the established fact of Ottoman supremacy.
It meant among other things a final reversal of the consequences of 1204, for it put an end to Italian commercial domination and restored Constantinople to its role as an imperial metropolis, but now under Ottoman auspices. In the process, Byzantium ceased to be, which may explain why contemporary opinion found 1453 so shocking. It made far more of an impact than did the earlier fall of Constantinople. The destruction of Byzantium in 1453 marked the passing of an era in a way that the previous fall of the city had not. The crusaders may have crippled Byzantium and made its full recovery impossible, but they failed to destroy it. In a sense, they gave it a new lease on life, as Byzantine scholars and ecclesiastics sought in exile to preserve the essentials of Byzantine civilisation, which were threatened by the Latin occupation of Constantinople. It fuelled a Byzantine resurgence, which drove the Latins from Constantinople in 1261. If this did not mean a return to political ascendancy, it did produce a sustained intellectual and spiritual revival, which did much to preserve Constantinople’s prestige and symbolic importance.
Nothing like this happened after 1453. What was the point in seeking to reverse what was deemed inevitable! Little effort was made to preserve Byzantine civilisation. Hopes of a Byzantine recovery remained in the realm of myth and fantasy. Despite the political weakness of the declining Byzantine Empire its disappearance created a void, which was quickly filled, as others appropriated different facets of Byzantium. Its role as the guardian of classical antiquity went to the West; the Ottomans assumed its imperial destiny, while the Russians reshaped its political ideology. The final fall of Constantinople therefore became a central point of reference for a complicated process of creating identities and ideologies to fit new realities.
Whether it was the Greek search for a new identity now that they were condemned to live as exiles in their own land; whether it was the transmutation of the notion of Christendom into Europe, as happened in the West; whether it was the emergence of the autocratic authority of the Czar at the heart of Holy Russia; or whether it was the elevation of the Ottoman Empire to the rank of a world power, all were set in relief by the conquest of Constantinople, whence the attention it attracted among contemporaries. Herein lies its real historical importance. Writing this book has taken much longer than I expected; much longer than it should have, but without Simin Abrahams’s help and encouragement I don’t think I would ever have been able to finish this book.
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